


there is lush; there is green, there's you and me

by meritmut



Category: Annihilation (2018), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Forests, Nature, annihilation-inspired, forests that probably want to eat you, lots of soft(tm) touches and soulful gazing because it's me but also it's Them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-13 22:25:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14122134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: She remembers sitting in the meadow a hundred yards or so from where the treeline begins, just watching them: the trees, wreathed in evening light and the faint nacreous pink of the shimmer; the shadow of the wood that crawls ever-so-slowly towards her.And the man, standing under the eaves, his features masked by the gloom and the fall of his dark hair.She knows him, though. She’s seen him in her dreams too.





	there is lush; there is green, there's you and me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hipgrab (merrymegtargaryen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymegtargaryen/gifts).



> title from delain's 'stardust'

Her dreams have changed, since she came here.

Or maybe it’s simply that, now that the forest is close enough that she can stand at its outermost edge, can step under its blanketing shadow and feel the stillness wrap around her like mist in the winter air, it has no need to visit her while she sleeps.

It sings to her, still, in waking and in dreams: this is how she’s always known they were something more than her imagination.

The light is blue beneath the trees, made hazy with the creeping advance of dusk through the forest. Rey catches the scent of something sweet—frost, perhaps, or rotten wood, the smell of dead things at the closing of the year. The air itself is honeyed with the perfume of decay but there’s something else too, a note of sharpness prickling the skin like the air before a lightning strike.

It’s still strange, being here, when it feels like she’s spent her whole life dreaming of this place; of these towering trunks, these spreading branches, these dappled patches of light and shade that shift almost imperceptibly in the wind. 

She remembers sitting in the meadow a hundred yards or so from where the treeline begins, just watching them: the trees, wreathed in evening light and the faint nacreous pink of the shimmer; the shadow of the wood that crawls ever-so-slowly towards her.

And the man, standing under the eaves, his features masked by the gloom and the fall of his dark hair.

She knows him, though. She’s seen him in her dreams too.

She is not afraid.

 

-

 

She doesn’t remember walking up to the forest’s edge, but he is closer now—close enough that she can make out more than the shape of him. Her eyes move over the furrow between his brows, the fullness of his mouth, the moles scattered across his pale skin like an inverse constellation. Each detail is as familiar to her as the sight of her own reflection.

Maybe more so, now. She doesn’t recall the last time she saw it.

 

-

 

There are flowers in her hair. 

His fingers move through them carefully, combing out knots and tangles with such gentleness Rey feels like something fragile would break if she were to move a muscle now. She holds herself still for him, closing her eyes to enjoy the peace of it because in this moment she is hungrier for it than she is for the wonders and sights of this unearthly forest.

Ben is cautious, the way he touches her, not like a delicate thing but like something infinitely precious: he parts her hair with deft hands and shows her where the little blossoms have begun to grow, a part of her, just as much  _Rey_ as her hair and her eyes and the freckles on her nose.

His own eyes take on a greenish light when surrounded by so much of it, bright with the reflected iridescence of the shimmer above them. There are flowers on him too, she notices now: tiny things, dark as arterial blood and nestled in the crow-black curls around his ears. When he lifts a hand to brush her hair back from her face, his knuckles lightly skimming over her cheek, she sees the pale roots like aged scars that weave and wind around his wrist.

Her flowers are sensitive to the touch, she learns, little thrills of silvery sensation running through her wherever his fingertips alight. Compelled by some unnameable instinct to return the gift he is giving her, she reaches out with one hand to lightly brush her fingers through the softness of the hair over his ears until her thumb can skim the petals of one of the tiny flowers there.

Red blooms across his cheeks and the shell of his ear and she pulls away, the apology already forming on her lips, but he catches her hand and holds it between them, and she cannot see her own reflection in his glassy eyes but Rey is sure she must be blushing too as he leans in and presses his lips to the fluttering pulse-point in her wrist.

The breath catches in her throat. She’s leaning in too, only half-aware of it but he looks up from her hand and his gaze darts between her mouth and her eyes so swiftly she barely has time to notice.

“I’ve waited for you,” he says quietly.

It’s not the first thing he has said to her; no, that had been her name, murmured in a voice soft as the wind on her skin as she passed through the shifting veil of the shimmer. Maybe there had been other things too, but Rey remembers only the sound of her name in his mouth, and how well it had fit there.

She wants to hear it again. She doesn’t want to forget.

Ben looks down at their hands, his thumb moving over the callus in her palm like he would smooth it away, but he doesn’t speak again until her fingers close gently around his.

“You stayed away for too long, Rey,” his voice is so  _heavy_  with sadness and resignation and Rey finds herself reaching out to cover their clasped fingers with her free hand because it had never occurred to her that a forest could be a lonely thing but oh, she feels it now, and it  _aches._

“I didn’t know to come,” she whispers, and it’s only half of the truth. Her dreams have shown her this place. She has always known she would one day come to it. She’s always felt the strange voiceless  _tug_ of it beneath her breastbone, like the faint sound of a familiar melody carried on the wind: it is a part of her, this song, she can feel it moving through her and filling her veins with sunlight, weaving soft and verdant hymns of reunion and memory around them in the shimmer-lit wood.

She’s always known she would come here. She’s just never known  _how._

“I’m not even sure how I found this place.”

Ben regards her with something close to amusement, now. “You knew the way,” he says, lifting her hand to his lips again, those eyes holding her in place as he moves his mouth over her palm and twinkling with delight at the way she shivers. “You’ve always known.”

“Yes,” Rey breathes, and every inch of her is  _singing_  to be home,“I think I have.”

His flushed, red mouth curves in a smile. “And I always knew you’d find your way back to me.”

She reaches for him again, her fingers gliding over his cheek to sink into the silky darkness of his hair. Ben leans into her touch, eyes falling closed as he goes slack under her caress, and this time when she brushes one of his delicate red flowers and he trembles with the sensation rippling through him, staining his cheeks with a sweet shade of pink and making his lips part on a breath, Rey doesn’t pull away.

Neither does he, when she leans in to taste those lips for herself.

He sighs into her mouth, his hand coming up to cradle her jaw.

The forest welcomes her home.

**Author's Note:**

> ~~i know i ended a jordskott fic in the exact same way ok don't @ me about my lack of creativity~~


End file.
